Performance, Mourning and the Long View of Nuclear Space

In their responses to the Fukushima disaster, artists may struggle with the problem of representing these calamitous events in ways that connect meaningfully with audiences. Related to this is the durational experience of nuclear catastrophe; how can theatre deal with the long term effects of radiation? Some plays have tackled these issues realistically, whereas others explore the disaster in more existential ways. In this essay I discuss two such works, Hirata Oriza's Sayonara (2011 version) and Okada Toshiki's Jimen to Yuka (Ground and Floor, 2013) to show how these plays depict the "swarm of ghosts" in the irradiated landscape around Fukushima. Peggy Phelan's notion of mourning is used to reflect on theatre's capacity to embody the wider dimensions of human suffering after Fukushima.